CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Road salt is in scarce supply in parts of Ohio, and some cities and towns are not only running out of salt, they're running out of money to buy more.

The Ohio Department of Transportation says it plans to help with the shortage by providing free salt -- about 150,000 tons all told -- to locations in seven counties.

"ODOT has never done this before," spokesman Steve Faulkner said Wednesday. "We're trying to be a good neighbor to these communities."

The salt deliveries should start in about two weeks, with about 10,000 tons deposited at each of the locations, with two more rounds of deliveries late this month or in early March. The salt will go to sites in Cuyahoga, Medina, Wood, Guernsey, Franklin, Pike and Hamilton counties, for hard-hit cities and towns that need to replenish their supplies.

Trucks were keeping state highways well salted. ODOT has had to ramp up salt purchases for road-plowing this winter because of repeated snowstorms sweeping the state.

It started the season with 627,000 tons of salt in its barns, which might have carried it through the winter -- ODOT uses on average 630,000 tons of salt for an entire season, although last year it needed just 370,000 tons.

But the stockpile it had on Oct. 1 is gone. ODOT ordered another 510,000 tons of salt for state highways. It's taken delivery of about 400,000 tons of that so far.